Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

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In the Daffodil Cafe in Pima, where he'd stopped for coffee this morning after the long wet drive from L.A., that voice had come from a nine-dollar radio on top of a refrigerator. The pudgy, white-haired woman in starched yellow gingham, tending the counter, had stood in front of him with the glass coffeepot forgotten in her hand, while she listened, her faded blue eyes staring far away. Wanting the coffee, he'd naturally paid attention to what she was listening to so hard. A catchy, forgettable little Western song. Guitar, clip-clop hoofbeats. Mild baritone. Pleasant, whimsical delivery. But nothing special. Yet tears were running down her soft old cheeks when the song ended. With a sad little smile she shook her head as she poured Dave's coffee. "Wasn't he wonderful?" she sighed. "Who's that?" Dave hadn't heard the announcer . 9 "Who!" She was indignant. "Why, Fox, Fox Olson, of course. Who'd you think?" "I didn't know." Dave smiled apology. "Then you must be a stranger," she said. "I am." He tried the coffee. It was good. He lit a cigarette . "I gather Fox Olson's a local celebrity." "Was," she said. "Oh, we miss him. The day they stop playing his songs ... Well, you know, they tried. Right after he was killed in that car crash up the canyon. They just stopped playing him. As though we was such hicks we didn't know there's such a thing as tapes these days. Like now he was gone, we wasn't going to hear him no more. "But everybody hollered so. Oh, I tell you, Pima kicked up a fuss. I don't expect there was anybody in town, except Mayor Chalmers, of course, that didn't phone up KPIM"-she said it as if it were a name, not call letters- "and say, put Fox Olson back on the radio. Well, they did, They got recordings of all his old broadcasts. They keep playing parts of those. They better." Her jowls set firmly, she turned and banged the coffeepot back on its hot plate. "They better not stop. . . ." Out of the radio the voice had sounded tinny. Here, now, in the rain, on the slatted wooden landing at the top of the garage stairs, hearing it through the open door, it sounded real. It wasn't. It was a recording. Ten-inch reels turned on a big professional tape rig against the wall opposite the door. Stainless steel panels, knobs, dials. Black speaker cones next to the ceiling. Once inside the room he could hear tape hiss. But for a moment there he'd have sworn he heard a living man. A girl in blue sat at a big, sleek, clean-lined desk. Her 10 hands were on the keys of a new electric typewriter but they were stilL She was sitting with her face turned up, listening, wearing the same rapt expression as the old Daffodil waitress. Only her eyes were shut and she was young and her face was like a flower with rain blessing it. Had been, for an instant. Then Mrs. Olson shut the door, crossed the room and struck a switch and the voice slurred and died. The girl opened her eyes, startled blue. "I wish you wouldn't, Terry. I've asked you before." "I'm sorry, Thorne." The girl was very blond. She blushed like a white rose. "You said you had an appointment. I didn't think you'd be coming out." "Neither did I. And I apologize for interrupting your ... work." Thorne Olson eyed skeptically the half-typed page in the machine, the heap of mimeographed scripts on the desk. "But I felt it was important for Mr. Brandstetter , here, to see Fox's studio." Her smile at Dave was mechanicaL She gestured, already turning away. "Miss Lockridge, my husband's secretary." She crossed the room to a small, glossy bar, where she found brandy and two more little snifters. She said, "Tell him what you're working on, would you, Terry?" "Why ... " The girl had a nice, shy, high-school smile. Her voice was a whisper. "It's a book. Of Fox's-Mr. Olson 's stories. He used to tell them on the air, read them. I'm typing them up from his scripts." Thorne Olson named a major New York publisher. "We sent...